Tuesday Archives #169: YELLOW

Welcome to the linky party that rejuvenates your old quilting/sewing posts! 

Please click here to read more about this linky party.  

This week's theme is: YELLOW!

Yes...Yellow! It's just such a happy color!
I have been busy prepping for Lori Holt's Bee Happy SAL and find myself anxious to get started on the blocks!  Especially when I saw she posted the adorable sun this week:

See....didn't that bright yellow sun just make ya smile. 

I specialize in edge to edge pantographs with over 100 designs to choose from.

Check out my Long-Arm Quilting page for details.

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Creativity: Being Prepared Part One

Which right now, I'm not!

Yet, as a school teacher, the new school year is more often than not my "New Year's Resolution" time of year. There are so many things I love about being a teacher, and the schedule is one of them.

Thus this Saturday morning as I find myself catching up on all your blogs and myself happily settled into a new school year, I find myself contemplating my quilty list of projects and set to use today to prepare myself for a productive year of Saturdays. 

Being Prepared

First, I've rearranged household routines of cleaning and mowing to be accomplished during the weekdays, between that afternoon gap of arriving home from school/work and dinner. My motivation?  My husband works Saturday, thus I really want to have my Saturdays free to relax and rejuvenate myself through my sewing/quilting.  It's an important part of my creative process to be intentional and organized. If not, it would be soooo easy for me to just go into my studio today and just kinda, look at everything. LOL! And truthfully, not get much done as there are WIP everywhere. (Of which I don't mind...that's normal for me, but none of it is really prepared to the point I just jump in there and sew for thirty minutes.) So being prepared is important to my creative process. We've been participating in the Primary Colors Personality exercises at work as a staff and quite honestly, I haven't done these kind of exercises since college. We've all loved it and have gained a better understanding of each other and ourselves. Heck, I've even had my family take the quiz. 

Okay, with that said, admittedly I'm a centered purple and only two point from being tied with centered orange.  I use to teeter into the extreme purple mode of micro-managing when I was younger, but age has truly mellowed any of those tenancies. My cooperating teacher teases me that I have "organized fun" and she's so right! Once my work is done...it's time for fun!

Seriously, it's admittedly that need for productivity and accomplishment that even has me sitting here today, "planning" my creative process so I can be productive while I have fun sewing! LOL!! (Of course I'm laughing at myself...but see, I just can't help it!)  Okay, with those confessions made and probably TMI shared, I am totally motivated by fellow blogger Jackie's "Alternative Creative Workspaces" post from last March. As, like many of us, she has a variety of creative projects going on at once and each with their own space and purpose. I love that!

Sooo what does being prepared look like for me?

Well, today I am setting out to accomplish the following:

1. Get projects ready and kept together.

2. Spaces I need projects for: a TV room hand project, a patio hand project, a sewing machine project, and well, there's always a quilt needing to be put on the frame. 

3. A portable project.

As I get busy with all this, have fun and click HERE  to take the personality test. 

Feel welcome to comment on this post to share your "color"  and how it relates to you as a quilter. 

I'll be back soon with an update of my progress.

I specialize in edge to edge pantographs with over 100 designs to choose from.

Check out my Long-Arm Quilting page for details.

I offer FREE Return Shipping on all quilts in the U.S.A.

Our Solar Eclipse Experience!!

Being in the Path of Totality, made our second day of school an absolute, life experience!

Here we were at 10:10am...sun shining bright as the students got to be one of the very first in our country to view this Solar Eclipse. Right now the Eclipse was beginning: 

We returned inside to "log" what we saw in our journals, only to return fifty minutes later as 

it started to "get weird" outside, hazy, darker, and cooler. We were now seeing the partial eclipse:

 

When finally at 11:26 this morning, our little spot in the world turned to night right in the middle of the day! A small slice of time when even a few stars could be seen shining bright above us!

As one little guy said: "I got goosbumps on my arms".

It was THAT kind of  day!!!

To say the least, we ended the day making "Eclipse" cookies and all went home with 

completed Eclipse journals commemorating this experience of totality.

And hello to my Eclipse/blogging buddy Carole who I know got to experience the very same thing near the end of the day, as she's in South Carolina! What a small world.

WOW! Please do share if you too, were able to experience any part of this Eclipse!

I specialize in edge to edge pantographs with over 100 designs to choose from.

Check out my Long-Arm Quilting page for details.

I offer FREE Return Shipping on all quilts in the U.S.A.

It's Going to be a Great Year!

The new school year has begun and as I begin what will be my 29th  year of teaching,

for a variety of reasons, I couldn't feel more happy and full of joyful anticipation for the year ahead.

First, I'm Organized.

A major "summer goal" I had was to reorganize the way I manage my calendar, lesson plans and quilty ideas/blog topics. (For my retired teacher readers, you'd be amazed how everything has gone "electronic".....included lesson plans!) Lucky for me, when we do our weekly planning, my teacher partner takes care of that end as I still write my lesson plans like this:

Yes, we have school during the Solar Eclipse and we are in a 100% zone! Kinda exciting!

And thanks to the help of my oldest daughter, I think I have finally found the perfect calendar/lesson book method for me! It's an Erin Condren Teacher Lesson Planner. It has a Lesson Planner section as pictured above. A Monthly Calendar section as shown below:

And a variety of others sections. Some that I've"customized" to fit my "quilty" needs. 

This page below shows my monthly projects at a glance. 

My husband was very humored as I played with washi tape and all the coordinating stickers that came with the book to put this all together exactly how I wanted it organized. But seriously, with it's resusable sheet protectors and additional folder, I'm able to keep all my "stuff" in one 8 1/2" x 11" book. I've eliminated two desk calendars, a lesson plan book and with the addition of their "monthly bills" tracker insert... my budget book! (Yes, I'm NOT a computer/techy person) I'm also looking forward to resurrecting my ol' "scrapbooking" skills and including pictures each month as pictured  on the monthly page above.

Next, My Teaching Partner.

This will be our second year teaching together and we have grown to realize that we are very  complimentary of each other. Working together is inspiring, fun and easy. I'm grateful for our work relationship and the friendship that has grown over the past year. This is relationship we both value and cherish because it doesn't happen all the time. Ta Da...our First Day of School picture:

Finally, We are SHINING!

Our classroom quilt made by last year's class made it's school debut at our Back to School BBQ this week. The kids were thrilled with all it's ribbons earned: A First Place Blue Ribbon in the Youth Group Category. A BIG Purple "Fair Board's Choice Award" annnddd and an orange "Viewers Choice" ribbon! Need-less to say, a popsicle party is in their near future!

I had planned to use the quilt in our classroom, but many staff members and parents have asked if I'm going to "raffle" the quilt. I honestly, haven't given this much thought. So we'll see.

Anyhoo, I'm just very grateful right now to be at a place in my life's journey that finds me genuinely content. My past few years have been filled with some of life's trials and tribulations that I sometimes worried I wouldn't be able to get through. But as those years have passed and acceptance has evolved, time has begun to heal my heart and without a doubt, the fact I'm not alone in these challenges has made all the difference in my healing. I have to say though, it's honestly just soooo nice to have settled into a new normal that finds me stronger and wiser and ready to shine once again!

My new class enjoyed being greeted with glow sticks as they arrived for Back to School night.

It's going to be a great school year! Please stay tuned.

I specialize in edge to edge pantographs with over 100 designs to choose from.

Check out my Long-Arm Quilting page for details.

I offer FREE Return Shipping on all quilts in the U.S.A.

WIN quilt batting this summer. Click HERE to read how.

Tuesday Archives #168 : WORDY Projects!

Welcome to the linky party that rejuvenates your old quilting/sewing posts! 

Please click here to read more about this linky party.  

This week's theme is: WORDS!

Words on quilts, words on projects, words on signs. Search your archives for those wordy projects! 

I'm going to rejuvenate my "trunk load of word quilts" but also wanted to share one of my stairways that is happily decorated with many of these quilts. I had a twenty-five dollar coupon and have recently treated myself to Lori Holt's new Spelling Bee book and now have a few more "wordy" quilts in the planning phase that will make a fun addition to this gallery of quilts.

I'm glad to have Tuesday Archives back and as always, look forward to what your have to rejuvenate for your archives for this week's theme!

I specialize in edge to edge pantographs with over 100 designs to choose from.

Check out my Long-Arm Quilting page for details.

I offer FREE Return Shipping on all quilts in the U.S.A.

WIN quilt batting this summer. Click HERE to read how.